Digital Tech and the Re-Birth of Product Placement

pbahra writes "When you think of product placement on television you tend to think of cumbersome 1950s examples where the actor would cheesily turn to camera and hold up, say, a bar of soap—where do you think the sobriquet soap opera came from—to deliver his line. Perhaps to save all of us the artistic murder, the practice was prohibited in Europe, but recently the prohibition has been relaxed and a U.K. start up is offering digital producers the chance to inject products realistically in post production with full directorial control. The problem with existing physical product placement is that there are no clear business plans, and the process is incredibly slow. In Europe, legal constraints prohibit directors from re-writing scripts to include products, so any placement has to be done at the creative stage."

Isn't bad...

[Darkness404]

Product placement isn't bad when it works with the story. For example, a horror movie isn't ruined because at a party they have a box of Pizza Hut pizza and are playing on a PS3. On the other hand, bad product placement can ruin character development, for example, showing what is supposed to be a poor family having a top-of-the line Mac in their kitchen.

Re:Why bother legislating it?

[0123456]

I don't understand banning the practice.

This is Europe we're talking about. Whenever people don't like something they have to pass a law against it, no matter how irrelevant or stupid.

Re:Isn't bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get why people care so much about this. If a film or TV show is supposed to be realistic, depicting people in the same world as the viewers, doesn't it make sense for real products to be shown? I actually DISLIKE when characters go to, say, a Burger Prince and order a Thumper. It feels fake, because we know if the characters were actually real, they'd be going to Burger King. Like it or not, that sort of thing is part of our world, and trying to pretend otherwise takes me out of the experience.

A good example of what I'm talking about is the McDonald's discussion in Pulp Fiction. The characters referencing real things that we can all relate to is what makes the scene so fun to watch. So, like the above poster said, I think product placement can be a great thing to add more believability to a show. Of course, there's such thing as lame product placement, where it's totally obvious that the only reason a product is in the scene is for advertising dollars, and that's something I don't like.

Re:Why bother legislating it?

[sakdoctor]

I don't much like the American definition of freedom.
Freedom is for individual people. Not for corporations.